Teplitz Amphora Vase, ca. 1900

Value (2011) |
$3,000Auction
–
$4,000Auction

Watch

GUEST: I was coming home from Dallas and we pulled off on a little town here, close to Oklahoma City, and there was a garage sale, and we stopped, and this was there in the garage sale, and so I bought it. I liked it. My sister was an artist and she did watercolor, and this kind of looks like her work.

APPRAISER: What did you pay for this?

GUEST: Five dollars.

APPRAISER: Five dollars? Okay. We've had Teplitz pottery on the show in the past, and this is a particularly pretty piece of Teplitz. Teplitz is from Bohemia, which is near the Dresden border, and they're known for making art nouveau pottery, almost in the German art nouveau style, and this is one such example. And you can see that it's a very pretty woman with enameled hair, unusual also because a lot of their portrait vases are just portraits, and this one, if we turn it around, we'll see there's actually a forest scene, which I've had on other pieces, I just haven't had both this art nouveau portrait and the forest scene on the same surface.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: So this would have been made sometime around 1900 to 1905.

GUEST: Really?

APPRAISER: Hand decorated, one-of-a-kind piece. I'm not sure which artist did this one. It was probably a man that did this, which is curious, too, because for the most part, the artists from this period tended to be women, and it's my understanding of the Teplitz decorators that the bulk of them were men. Let me show you the marks on this as well so you know what we're talking about here. There's your Teplitz mark. It has "Turn" and "Teplitz" and it has "Bohemia" written on it as well. There's another factory mark, it's dye-stamped Amphora, but it's very hard to pick up. It's into the glaze, so...

GUEST: Oh, I see.

APPRAISER: The enameling is an unusual touch, as I mentioned earlier, these blues and pinks. Without that, it'd be a fairly flat and far less interesting piece.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: So in terms of value, a portrait vase this size would usually be about $2,000 to $3,000.

GUEST: You're kidding! Really?

APPRAISER: A scenic this size is usually about $2,000 to $3,000, but I think the two of them together, at auction, I'd estimate this for somewhere about $3,000 to $4,000 and expect it to bring all of that.

GUEST: I think I made my money back.

APPRAISER: Yeah, you did just fine.

GUEST: Oh, that's wonderful.

APPRAISER: I should add that these are probably the best art nouveau portraits on ceramics done in the world at this time.

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